Blog: Perspectives

blog page block - Blog Page Block

This report is part of a project on Increasing Access to Justice for LGBTI Communities in Indonesia that OutRight Action International and its Indonesian partners, Arus Pelangi, Kemitraan and LGBTI activists in eight Indonesian provinces have been working on since 2015.

I believe that we should consider our losses, the ones that are visible in the media and known by us, and the ones that we do not know that occur in the suburbs of my country. Those being raped, or are targeted by transphobia and hate crimes in the backstreets of Tarlabasi or other cities in this country.

The government of Costa Rica has made recent strides toward ensuring human rights protections for trans citizens, such as enacting an executive decree in 2015 to eliminate discrimination against the “sexually diverse” population. However the right to legal gender recognition is not yet codified in law, policy, or practice. Recent developments regarding the ability of trans individuals to be photographed as they identify on government identification documents show positive improvements, yet OutRight’s briefing paper “Mapping Trans Rights in Costa Rica” reveals systematic inconsistencies and the conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity in policy.

OutRight Action International recently conducted a research initiative to evaluate Colombia’s policies for trans people and finds that the reality for transgender people in Colombia is one of contradiction: Colombia has some of the world’s most progressive laws on anti-discrimination and gender identity recognition and at the same time has some of the world’s highest rates of murder and violence against the trans community and stigma against the community is high.

In Chile, the proposed gender recognition bill continues to be at a standstill. Proposed in 2013, the bill continues to be the subject of debate and amendment, particularly concerning its scope of the protection to guarantee the rights of trans children. OutRight’s briefing paper “Mapping Trans Rights in Chile” recognizes that trans children are among the most vulnerable sector of the population and should have the right to access the gender recognition bill.

This year's OutSummit 2016 will be held on International Human Rights Day - December 10th!

Right now we already have over 30 activists from every region of the world booked to attend and we're also organizing to have some very senior LGBTIQ leaders and experts there to fill us in on the latest news in the global movement.

We asked activists attending Advocacy Week to share with us what it is like being LGBTIQ in their country. Paisarn Likhitpreechakul from Thailand wrote and read this poem for us to share. We've found it to be calmingly motivating in these stormy times.

I wish I could say that being an LGBT individual was a walk on a golden brick road. However, being LGBT in Belize is comparable to climbing Doyle’s Delight with 150 pounds on your back. At the base of the mountain of equality, LGBT individuals are burdened with the weight of stigma, discrimination, and fear- of being outted, humiliating your family, and losing your life.

Being an LGBT+ individual in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region means living in constant fear and worry. It is the fear of putting yourself in danger, the fear of losing everything you have, and everyone you know. Regardless of whether or not these fears become reality, they force us to live a life of lies, pretending to be something else.